2010s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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knives
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#176 Post by knives » Tue May 24, 2016 2:06 pm

I was referring to the To. Sorry about the lack of clarity will edit.

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swo17
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#177 Post by swo17 » Tue May 24, 2016 6:40 pm

Another handful of lists in over the last few days, and we already almost have a top 50. At the moment, we have eight new films eligible for the upcoming "all time" list by virtue of appearing on at least two different top 5s. Most of them are not terribly surprising compared to their performance in the dynamic top 10 threads, but there is one film that's already made the grade with less than 10 mentions there, and it's currently in our top 10 for the half-decade. Also, the current #5 on our list is only an honorable mention in the consensus thread.

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Trees
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#178 Post by Trees » Tue May 24, 2016 7:07 pm

swo, where has most of the discussion taken place here regarding the upcoming All-Time list you have mentioned?

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domino harvey
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#179 Post by domino harvey » Tue May 24, 2016 7:09 pm

Discussion starts here

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Tommaso
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#180 Post by Tommaso » Thu May 26, 2016 2:30 pm

Probably my final post in this thread before the deadline. Here are four films that will definitely make my list:

The best one first:

Bellas mariposas (Salvatore Mereu 2012): The film follows a day in the life of two early teenage girls in the poorer parts of Calgiari on the island of Sardinia. Told in what has sometimes been described as neo-neorealism, the film's style and tone indeed owes something to the Italian cinema of the 1950s, but manages to feel totally fresh and up-to-date. The girls seem to be constantly threated by the male-dominated world around them but deal with it with wit, power, female bonding, and pure love of life. At once a sad and heart-warming film, very beautifully photographed, and actresses Sara Podda and Maya Mulas are simply phenomenal. A truly touching and captivating coming-of-age story, and occasionally it's dead funny, too. Available on an Italian disc with English subs. If you still find time to get hold of it, watch it. I should have plugged this one much earlier.

L'Apollonide (Bertrand Bonello 2011): An extremely beautifully shot film about life in a Parisian high class brothel around 1900. The US title "House of Pleasures" feels a little too sensationalistic to me, as Bonello's interest lies not so much in eroticism as in showing us the feelings and backgrounds of the various women who live and work there and who are not allowed to leave the house. It's a life of misery behind the beautiful, decadent facade, but nevertheless it also allows for friendship and solidarity. There's not much going on in terms of plot, but it's gripping all the time.

Habitacion en Roma (Julio Medem 2010): A Spanish and a Russian woman meet by chance in Rome and spend a night together. Medem makes this story believable although its depiction of the discovery of lesbian love is perhaps seen rather a bit too much from a male point of view, probably not least because actress Natasha Yarovenko is so ultra-attractive from a heterosexual perspective... But setting the film almost exclusively in the hotel room, which is graced by meaningful/allegorical paintings, and fantastic cinematography and direction ensures that the film in spite of some flaws (there's a pretty awful dream vision sequence involving Cupid/Eros) has remained pretty much memorable to me. But perhaps that's really due to Miss Yarovenko...

La Sapienza (Eugene Green 2014): Only my second Green film after "Le pont des arts", and I liked it much better. In some way, it often feels like an art lecture, but if so, then it's the most fascinating one I've seen with the exception of Greenaway's "Rembrandt's J'accuse", or if we talk architecture, "The Belly of an Architect". The extremely stylised acting would have been ridiculous in a film by a lesser director, but somehow it works and advances the effect of this meditation on the beauty of art, love, and ultimately life itself. Very impressive, even if one has to get used to Green's mannerist style.

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TMDaines
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#181 Post by TMDaines » Fri May 27, 2016 4:57 am

All of those films were on my watchlist, but I realised yesterday that I have become burnt out after only watching very recent films. I'll probably watch a couple more things before the deadline, but my top 25 is already all killer and no filler.

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Trees
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#182 Post by Trees » Fri May 27, 2016 8:19 am

swo17 wrote:Just a reminder that lists are due two weeks from today, and that's Memorial Day weekend, so some of you might not want to wait until the last minute...
What list is this deadline for?

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domino harvey
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#183 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 27, 2016 8:39 am

The thread you're in

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Trees
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#184 Post by Trees » Fri May 27, 2016 9:03 am

Oh lol, sorry. #-o :oops: I was jumping around from list thread to list thread and got disoriented.

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Trees
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#185 Post by Trees » Fri May 27, 2016 4:28 pm

Am I reading the rules correctly that these three films cannot be combined into one? Only two-part films can?

Berserk: The Golden Age Arc III
Berserk: The Golden Age Arc II - The Battle for Doldrey
Berserk: The Golden Age Arc I - The Egg of the King

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knives
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#186 Post by knives » Fri May 27, 2016 4:41 pm

Yes, that's correct. According to the rules they are three different films.

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swo17
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#187 Post by swo17 » Fri May 27, 2016 5:10 pm

I don't know anything about those films, but just to be a little more precise, the distinction is between trilogies/movies paired with their sequels, and multi-part films, which are presented in more than one part only for reasons of practicality. Occasionally multi-part films happen to be released in three parts (Bernard's Les Miserables, Gomes's Arabian Nights, Assayas's Carlos, Ruiz's Manoel on the Island of Marvels, or even The Human Condition, which is technically a six-part film) which can confuse matters. I don't know which side this falls on. Are you actually thinking of voting for it?

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Trees
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#188 Post by Trees » Fri May 27, 2016 5:31 pm

I'm definitely voting for them. These three films are based on a long-running Japanese manga, which also spawned a 26-part anime series back in the 1990s (which I highly recommend!). The way that the films are broken up into three parts is totally arbitrary and they were produced more or less simultaneously and contiguously, so to me, based on what you are saying, it seems like I could combine them?

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swo17
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#189 Post by swo17 » Fri May 27, 2016 5:49 pm

Having done about one minute of research it seems a case could be made that they constitute one multi-part film, so I will be kind and let you have just one orphan out of them instead of three.

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Trees
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#190 Post by Trees » Sat May 28, 2016 1:21 am

swo17 wrote:Having done about one minute of research it seems a case could be made that they constitute one multi-part film, so I will be kind and let you have just one orphan out of them instead of three.
:D Thank you.

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the preacher
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#191 Post by the preacher » Sat May 28, 2016 7:28 am

Ballot sent. Mostly restricted to films released in this country (I'm afraid I'm not up to date with the most obscure stuff yet). Even so I expect lots of orphans, as always. :P

Breakdown by country:
Dominican Republic-1
France-6
Germany-1
India-2
Iran-1
Italy-1
Poland-1
Romania-1
Singapore-1
Spain-1
UK-2
USA-7

Honorable mentions:
50/50 (2011)
De rouille et d'os [Rust and Bone] (2012)
Fehér isten [White God] (2014)
Fu cheng mi shi [Mystery] (2012)
Hwanghae [The Yellow Sea] (2010)
Incendies (2010)
Jagten [The Hunt] (2012)
Mandariinid [Tangerines] (2013)
Mistérios de Lisboa [Mysteries of Lisbon] (2010)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
The Town (2010)
V tumane [In the Fog] (2012)

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swo17
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#192 Post by swo17 » Sat May 28, 2016 2:37 pm

Several more lists in, and things are starting to get interesting. Here's another clue: There are currently twenty directors who have multiple films that have received votes, but only one director who has received votes for three films...

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Tommaso
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#193 Post by Tommaso » Sat May 28, 2016 3:29 pm

the preacher wrote: Breakdown by country:
This is something that gets increasingly different with the current practice of multi-national productions. I've just handed in my list, and tried to make such a country breakdown for myself. But for instance, I have three films from Iranian directors on my list, but only one of these films is an Iranian production proper. Similarly, my highest-ranking film by an American director should probably be attributed to all sorts of European countries, but only to about 10% to the USA (that the director's films always look like European arthouse stuff anyway doesn't help, either).

And if I gave individual points to all countries which were part of a production, France probably would be even more the most featured country on my list. It is anyway, with six French films 'proper', which surprises me, as I thought I was not that much a fan of contemporary French filmmaking.

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Trees
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#194 Post by Trees » Sun May 29, 2016 1:36 pm

Is there any reason why a 2015 film could not be included in this list? This project informs the all-time list, and, at least for me, there was one film in 2015 that was a big gamechanger in my all-time list.

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knives
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#195 Post by knives » Sun May 29, 2016 1:53 pm

There was a lot of conversation over it starting here.

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domino harvey
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#196 Post by domino harvey » Sun May 29, 2016 1:55 pm

There's nothing list compilers love more than users who haven't been participating in a project weighing in at the literal last minute with a rule change request

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swo17
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#197 Post by swo17 » Sun May 29, 2016 2:12 pm

My all-time favorite film isn't eligible for the all-time list either. Oh well.

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Trees
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#198 Post by Trees » Sun May 29, 2016 2:16 pm

knives wrote:There was a lot of conversation over it starting here.
Thanks, knives. This discussion took place before I was a member here. I am trying my best to to get up to speed and submit the worthiest list I can. I only learned of this 2010-2104 project a few days ago, so I have been crashing the last few days to get my list together. I have found some pretty amazing new (to me) films by going through the 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2014 list threads. zedz's posts have proven particularly bountiful, though so have many others, like yours and swo's and TM Daines' and others.

swo, perhaps there could be some mechanism to allow 2015 films into the final all-time?

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swo17
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#199 Post by swo17 » Sun May 29, 2016 2:40 pm

Trees wrote:swo, perhaps there could be some mechanism to allow 2015 films into the final all-time?
That mechanism is called the passage of time. By the time we finish the all-time list there will no doubt be some 2016 films that people wish they could vote for too. A month after we finish the list, someone will make another great film. There has to be a cutoff at some point. Maybe we'll do this again in ten years and The Assassin will be eligible then.

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knives
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#200 Post by knives » Sun May 29, 2016 11:26 pm

Last one before Tuesday. Yay, I guess.

Wolf Children
Hosoda is really amazing at turning the mundane fantastic and vice versa with this film really leaning on the mundane aspect. There's a My Neighbor Totoro simplicity to the film. Once it moves to the country it practically becomes a maternal Only Yesterday with the mother of the titled children just trying to do the best with the new life she takes on. As the movie goes on the werewolf aspect does become a stronger force, but more so that Hana has to deal with the difficulties of raising and being children instead of anything inherently fantastic. Perhaps not as exciting as Hosoda's recent efforts and I do find the dichotomy between wolf and human to be silly, but it still winds up being very good.

This is Not a Film
I was expecting something like Duras' The Truck which there are elements of here, but Panahi's love for classical storytelling prevent him from making something so austere. Instead we're offered an interesting reflection on if Panahi's career matters with ironic refrains on his upperclass life and concerns in relation to the lives of those he has filmed. There's some mild hostility to the regime, but nothing as direct as the ending to Taxi. The use of the Fireworks Wednesday celebrations, which I didn't know was still celebrated, and Panahi's displacement from it really hits this idea home in the most cinematic and effective way for the whole film. Panahi is, for lack of a better phrase, too relaxed for this to make as big an impact as his other films and I think he's still too busy figuring out how to make a film in exile for this to amount to more then a successful experiment. Thankfully Taxi suggests that he's a quick student. It's also a bit crazy how much he has physically aged between the two movies especially in comparison to the footage of him from Mirror used here. That probably tells the horror of the regime better then anything else.

Stations of the Cross
This seems really over egged and silly, but maybe that's just because of how foreign the material is to me. Bruggemann seems to try to guard himself against this criticism by having the lead be part of an obscure old timey sect (I think), but then that just makes his critique of Catholicism pointless as it applies to just a minor fringe. The concerns about the girl and her relationship to and understanding of sacrifice reveals an immaturity and lazy leftist agnosticism that makes the whole film very worthless. I wish we still had a Bunuel out there to tackle these sorts of concepts with intelligence and courage. Bunuel's Milky Way is just as inscrutable as this for me due to a lack of knowledge of Christianity, but with the Bunuel there's a clear academic research and knowledge that makes the critiques felt even when not fully understood. Here where I have a decent amount more of pre-knowledge (I've seen a few Jesus movies and am aware of Vatican II which seem to be the two requirements here) the critiques seem nonsensical and unrelated to any sort of mainstream Christianity or Christian history. Perhaps this is another example of ignorance on my part, but the tableaux seem to get pretty lazy as the film goes on. I have to image the stations have been painted many times for Bruggemann to draw from. There's easily identifiable paintings to connect the film to early on and he does well there, but the later images (starting around Veronica) don't aim for that sort of visual dialogue and he quickly abandons his paintings staging the movements rather naturally which seriously poses the question of why bother to present a visual austerity if you refuse to keep it?

Pawn Sacrifice
This is unusually good for Zwick, maybe he should be kept to make films only about morally compromised Jews, with an increasingly small scope until it swallows itself into Fischer's paranoid concerns like a lesser The Aviator. The film starts up threatening to be as overegged and self serious as its tagline but thankfully changes to a metaphor of Fischer against himself narrative which isn't special but significantly better then the Rocky IV narrative it could have been. Also it's very nice to see Maguire in a film again. I have no clue why he wasn't able to sustain his star, but the way he carries this film really highlights why he should have a higher profile.

Blind
This is a pretty well done throwback to the early aught everyone is connected genre with a potential St. Elsewhere twist in the storytelling. The opening sequence told in delicate detail from the blind woman's point of view does suggest a great film with the empathy of Shimizu. Her character remains the highlight of the movie given many little moments where she is allowed to be a human, loose and accidental, which suits the overall style of the film perfectly as Vogt's direction is bright and simple like a hospital room (I meant that as a compliment but it probably sounds bad). There's also some slight suggestions on the power of memory in relation to sight that is never fully developed, but is excellent when brought up. These good qualities though are severely undercut by boring Scandinavian skeeziness and immaturity with its male characters and ultimately doesn't amount to more then a distraction. Most of them at least fit in with the feeling of the movie, but the fat guy, Einar, is like a first draft version of PSH's character in Happiness and simply does not make any sense in the world of these other characters and seems to existence to fill some inane quota on bad von Trier characters. He doesn't even really affect the story in any meaningful way of connect to the title as the other stories do so he could be cut out with no negative affect to the film at all. This wouldn't be the greatest film without him, but it would be a much better light film ala Tuesday After Christmas sort of film.

Paradise: Hope
This is okay and there's not much more to say about it then that. The generic plot and direction are inoffensive enough not to matter much when it does well or poor. The actors are all excellent in their roles which are well fleshed out and realistic in a way that is unfortunately unique nowadays. There's a real empathy and simplicity going on here that I really appreciate even as it doesn't do much for me beyond that base intellectual status. These really great qualities boost Seidl's film as far more pleasant then it really should be, but all of these niceties don't really matter when attached to something so nondescript.

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